Each week, CGN interviews a local art dealer to discuss the ins and outs of running a gallery in the city of Chicago. This week we caught up with Randy Alexander of Randy Alexander Gallery.

Gallery: Randy Alexander Gallery
Name: Randy Alexander
Previous occupations: Fundraiser, Actor, Truck Driver, Curator
Hometown: Chicago

Chicago Gallery News: How did you become an art dealer? 

Randy Alexander: I lost my mind one day and the first thing that came to me was running a gallery.

CGN: Please describe your gallery’s program in one sentence.

RA: Emerging and established conceptually-based art.

CGN: What's the first thing you do each morning when you get to the gallery? 

RA: Use the restroom.

CGN: Thumbs up or down on art fairs?

RA: Down.

CGN: Artists you admire but don't represent?

RA: Berenice Abbott, Gertrude Abercrombie, Vito Acconci, Ansel Adams, Nicolas Africano, Josef Albers...I won't even get beyond the A’s before we run out of space for this answer.

CGN: Best sale you ever had?

RA: Sturtevant's Joseph Beuys’ Fat Corner.

CGN: What advice would you share with new or young collectors?

RA: Buy everything I tell you to buy.

CGN: What’s coming up next at your gallery?

RA: Opening on September 16, two shows with Inigo Manglano-Ovalle and Jeff Prokash.

CGN: What major successes have you had this year? What about challenges?

RA: Major success this year was staying in business. Major challenge this year was staying in business.

CGN: How do you view working as an art dealer in Chicago? How does it compare to New York in the 1990s?

RA: Chicago has a dynamic emerging scene and my job is to find, exhibit and translate the most powerful work I encounter from that scene.  The 1990s collectors in New York were more passionate about investing in emerging artists. 

CGN: What is your favorite interest outside of the art world?

RA: Movies.

CGN: What is your favorite work of public art in Chicago?

RA: Kwagulth Totem Pole (east of Lake Shore Drive at Addison).

CGN: What are the five best shows you’ve seen so far in 2017?

1. Kerry James Marshall: Mastry at the Met Breuer
2. Robert Rauschenberg: Among Friends at MoMA
3. Joan Jonas: what is found in the windowless house is true at Gavin Brown’s enterprise
4. Florine Stettheimer: Painting Poetry at the Jewish Museum
5. Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art of the In-Between at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Randy Alexander is the owner of Randy Alexander Gallery located in the South Loop in Chicago. For more information about his gallery visit: Randy Alexander Gallery.